Author:

Keywords:

school climate, high schools

Abstract:

Using a longitudinal design this paper estimates the effect of school climate (SC) on three student outcomes: educational attainment (reaching the last grade of secondary education vs. being retained), mathematics achievement, and sense of belonging (SoB) to secondary school. The paper situates itself within the field of educational effectiveness and understands SC as a multi-dimensional construct encompassing four dimensions: school physical environment, characteristics of individuals, relationships between individuals/groups, and school culture (shared norms and beliefs). We use multilevel logistic regression to model attainment and hierarchical linear models for achievement and SoB. SC has an effect on all dependent variables; however different dimensions of SC are relevant for each outcome. Relationships among individuals/groups within schools have a statistically significant effect on all dependent variables, while school culture only has an effect on attainment but not on SoB. The effects of the other two dimensions are less clear. The main contribution of the study is assessing the differential impact of each SC dimension on students’ cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes using a longitudinal design. In policy terms, the results suggest the importance of designing specific educational policies for each type of results one seeks to improve urban high schools in Peru.